By Malaya Madison
Imagine walking down the halls to use the bathroom or get water, and all you see are marshmallows gliding through the air.
Well, this is what many Lovett students saw last week when Calculus started to wrap up their minimums and maximums unit by launching marshmallows.
So how does launching marshmallows and calculus go together? This question is exactly what Calculus students set out to explore.
Lindsey Boozer, US Math Teacher, started the class by having the students choose who they wanted to work with for this project and to sit with their partners. Then she asked, “What is projectile motion?”
Ms. Boozer tipped me off that ”Projectile motion is a curved path an object takes when it is launched in the air. In this case, it will be marshmallows,” Ms. Boozer explained.
During the unit, students graphed minimums and maximums. For this project, they were focusing on maximums. Students would measure the length the marshmallow traveled, and then graph the data on the LoggerPro app.
The first step was to gather supplies: a meter stick, instructions to build their launcher using PVC pipes, and, the best part, marshmallows.
Sitting in on the class, I watched Ms. Boozer go around asking the students if they would like fruit or regular marshmallows. Most of the students wanted regular marshmallows, a true classic.
Then, students had a blast figuring out how to blow the marshmallows around and testing out the launchers at the beginning of the class. Keep in mind, they had been in class for less than 10 minutes.
“Put your launchers down and come gather over here,” she said.
After she further explained the instructions, the groups ventured out to the hallways to work on their projects. Some groups were challenged with larger angles, while some weren’t.
After seniors Alden Susong and Frannie Berry watched their marshmallows fly, Alden said, “That was beautiful.”
I asked the students what they thought about learning this way, rather than through a lecture, and there were mixed answers, but they all aligned with each other.
Some students weren’t immediately convinced of the connection between a marshmallow flight and calculus.
“Yes, I think it’s fun,” senior Zara Hebb said early on. “I’m not really sure how this relates to what we’re learning yet, but we’ll see.” But reflecting on the project, Zara Hebb understood how it connected “to what we’re learning through concavity.”
Ms. Boozer actually moved the project up to give her students a better chance to understand the material for the test.
She noticed students “consulting their notes to make sure they could answer the questions on the project, which is helping them study for their test.”
But she was enthusiastic from the very beginning. As the class was starting the day I observed, Ms. Boozer exclaimed, “Come on, guys, get hype, this is going to be fun!” Her students, at the time, were skeptical.
However, by the end of the project, students understood where Ms. Boozer was coming from, having had a memorable, mathematically delicious experience.
